Hi, Alice: I'm one of those dreaded "newbies" that have been flamed all over. When I looked at the prefix for threads, the music prefixes were all specific... lyric add, etc. I figured that I had to pick something, and nothing fit in the music categories. Maybe I can just make my own title? "Music." But who knows, maybe we're upgrading the bs threads. With all the flaming going on, they could use it.

Yeah, expand the thread to what is involved in accompanying someone,RichM.. to me the basic rule is that the song should sound better with the accompaniment, but your ear should be tuned to the song, not the accompaniment. Pretyy much what you said.

A humorous, true anecdote. The ONLY time I've ever been invited to add an accompaniment on a recording, I was called to come over and lay down a banjo track on a song that had to be finished that night. It was a good friend, and he was trying to finish a CD. The song was going to be the title track of the CD, and I was a little surprised that he would ask me to lay down a banjo track. I don't consider myself all that stellar a banjo player. But, I went over to the studio, put on a set of head phones to listen to what had already been recorded, so I could figure out a banjo harmony. All that I heard in the headphones were chords being fingerpicked, with no melody. I asked where the melody was, and my friend hadn't finalized it yet. I asked how I was supposed to work out a second line, if I didn't know what the melody was, and he said, just follow the chord progression (which he decided to change, once I had started to get familiar with it.) Finally, he got the chord progression the way that he wanted it, without a melody line. When I laid down my track as best I could he said that it sounded really good, and why didn't I take a lead on a break. I asked him how I could take a lead on a break if I didn't know what the melody was. When the album came out, I was there, sure enough. Mixed back enough so it sounded fine. It was nice to find out what melody I was accompanying...

Jerry